About Me

Known principally for his weekly political columns and his commentaries on radio and television, Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.

Bowalley Road Rules

The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.These are based on two very simple principles:Courtesy and Respect.Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.

Followers

Thursday, 9 March 2017

A Gut Feeling.

Hooked On A Feeling: From having a National prime minister who worked tirelessly at being “Everyman”, New Zealand finds itself saddled with a prime minister who appears to have it in for every man, woman and child unfortunate enough to have been born outside the top 10 percent of income-earners. Have New Zealanders told the pollsters this? Not yet. But that’s probably because they have yet to admit to themselves that their love affair with National is over.

AM I GUILTY of wishful thinking, or are the times really
a-changing? If I still took any notice of opinion polls, the answers,
respectively, would be “Yes” and “No”. There is, as yet, no empirical evidence
of a major shift in electoral allegiances. Unfortunately, in these times, that
sort of data only seems to become available after the electoral picture has
been radically defaced.

More and more people, according to the psephological
post-mortems of both Brexit and Trump, are either refusing point-blank to speak
to pollsters, or flat-out lying to them. The burden of representing the popular
mood is, increasingly, falling to the well-meaning and the well-heeled; the
believers in conventional wisdom; or, more worryingly, to the purveyors of
unconventional ignorance.

Which only leaves me my gut – and my gut is answering,
respectively, “No” and “Yes”. This is not wishful thinking. A big political
shift is underway.

And because this is New Zealand, the shift is being
registered in the electorate’s responses to – and the reactions of – its political
leaders. Like iron filings scattered on a white sheet of paper and then positioned
over a magnet, New Zealand’s politicians are arranging themselves along unseen
but irresistible lines of force.

Those who have been following Andrew Little around the
country have noticed the change. Where once the Labour leader would turn up to
meet and greet embarrassingly small audiences, Little’s entourage are now
reporting audiences in the hundreds.

Winston Peters knows all about this particular barometer of
the public’s appetite for change. His scorn for polls is based upon their
inability to capture the peculiar temper of a political crowd. The way it lets
the man or woman standing behind the microphone at the front of the hall know whether
or not their messages are getting through. The shiver of recognition with which
it greets the telling example; the shocking statistic.

Maybe Crosby-Textor’s polling techniques and focus-group
analyses can replicate this. Maybe not. What they cannot replicate is the almost
erotic intimacy between speaker and audience, audience and speaker. When that
connection is made, the impact on both parties is formidable. The audience’s
faith in the politician soars: as does the politician’s faith in himself.

Then there’s the evidence of the ballot-box itself. The Mt
Albert By-Election, for example, could have produced a very different result.
After all, the electors were presented with two, strong, centre-left candidates,
and no candidate at all from the governing party. At least one journalist, who
had followed the campaign closely, suggested that the Greens’ Julie Anne Genter
was good for 30 percent of the votes cast. In what was essentially a two-horse
race, it was a perfectly reasonable expectation.

But it was not the result. Labour’s Jacinda Ardern walked
away with nearly 80 percent of the votes cast, leaving Genter with a measly 11
percent. Reasonableness had nothing to do with it.

For Little, himself, it’s as if the impenetrable fog blanketing
Labour’s leadership since 2008 has suddenly lifted, revealing a clear pathway
to victory. From being ham-fisted and flailing, Little’s gestures have become
purposeful and precise. For the first time in nearly nine years, Labour appears
to have a leader who sees where he’s going, and knows what he’s doing.

Just as suddenly, the same fog of misfortune which had
formerly enveloped Labour has wrapped itself around Bill English and the
National Party. The self-assured political touch of John Key has been replaced
by ill-considered improvisation and counter-productive communication. English
cannot seem to avoid either insulting or upsetting the electorate. If he’s not
dismissing young New Zealanders as drug-addled layabouts, he’s informing them
that they’ll have to wait an additional two years before becoming eligible for
NZ Superannuation.

From having a National prime minister who worked tirelessly
at being “Everyman”, New Zealand finds itself saddled with a prime minister who
appears to have it in for every man, woman and child unfortunate enough to have
been born outside the top 10 percent of income-earners.

Have New Zealanders told the pollsters this? Not yet. But that’s
probably because they have yet to admit to themselves that their love affair
with National is over. How many of us, after all, are all that keen to admit to
a relationship gone bad? In our heart, though, and in our gut, we know that
something has shifted irrevocably: that the love has gone.

Inevitably, the day comes when we are no longer afraid to
say: “It’s over.” Call it wishful thinking if you like, but my gut is telling
me that, for the New Zealand electorate, that day will be Saturday, 23
September 2017.

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Wednesday, 8 March 2017.

I think Labour will be hamstrung by it's past and it's association with the Green party. Not long ago Little said house prices were entirely due to lack of supply, so he's still trying to have a bob each way.

Well you have the three term electoral cycle history as a benchmark so it is reasonable to expect a change of Govt in September. The cunning yet cowardly actions of the fake 'Everyman" Key in quietly handing over the reins of a stage coach heading for the cliff will go mostly unchallenged. Poor old Bill the fall guy, if he had been smart he would have forgone his fifteen minutes of fame, told Key he can keep driving, and jumped himself. Key will be grinning from afar and the Nats will be furiously casting about looking for another "Everyman" to helicopter in to rescue the party.

Hi Chris What policy change do you detect should be a change of government? OK so they've changed places on super entitlement age since the last election, what else? What's the difference? During the first term of the Lange government, to my own amazement I joined the Labour party. This was because I reasoned that with Jim Anderton being the only public identity expressing my own horror at what the executive wing was doing to the country, that there must be an enraged core of party members around him that probably constituted the most likely political force in the country to reverse or arrest the destruction. I persuaded the local leader and candidate to write to the national exec to have the policies discussed at the next AGM but she was firmly closed down. The support for Jim was minimal within the party then so he started the NLP and I joined up in Wellington . Just as you did and for the same reasons. Notwithstanding that the Lange originals have now retired, labour has never shown the slightest inclination to reverse those fundamental changes to neoliberalism ,and until they do I don't believe they deserve the support you give them.And irrespective of Jacinda's winning smile they don't deserve to be the government again . I think it is policies that matter, not who is promoting them, and the democratic thing to do is to vote for whoever has policies that come closest to what you perceive as most important, irrespective of their chance of wining the benches. At least while there is nothing of significance to chose between. Way back then with the oil shock causing rampant inflation in many countries most people though shocked, resolved to give the Rogernomics a chance, like with an unplanned pregnancy they mostly made the psychological adjustment to live with it and hope for the best. Now the pregnancy has produced "Rosemary's Baby" and many people are articulating their dismay. They broke it. They should fix it.Cheers David Stone

The Key shine is fading and even getting a little bitter, however I think that it won't have come into full effect come election time and National will see another term. If Labour were a bit more convincing, they would take them.

Labour can't afford to parade policies that are not 'vote winners' before the election. And they must be 'vote winners' across a broad enough spectrum to attract that fickle NZ electorate that decides all elections. One point I agree with Chris is his comments about keeping them honest once they get across the line. I suspect a Labour/Green/NZ First govt would be reasonably self regulating given the mix. Its going to be difficult to just reverse every bad policy that has ever been put into place over the past forty years. However a good start would be a fresh start and the current National govt are definitely not the fresh team.

Humorous article from back in October about inaccurate polls between Hillary and Bernie. The article is not so funny now though....http://www.theonion.com/article/gallup-forced-destroy-defective-sample-group-faile-52511

Perhaps they can now draw some inspiration from the elections in Western Australia. Where cost of living in housing prices seem to have played a major part. Though God knows compared to New Zealand housing prices aren't that bad. Maybe Kiwis are just more apathetic.

he VVD was only able to win by posing as Wilders-lite and pretending to be a nationalist party. Though the media will scream that he is finished, Wilders has a stronger presence in the legislature.

Perhaps more importantly, the Left, as shown by the rise of the Green Party and the “Denk” Party, a party explicitly for Muslim migrants, is now characterized purely by anti-white animus and a lust for population replacement [Live Wire Dutch Elections: Collapse of Mainstream Parties Not Matched By Expected Wilders Surge, Breitbart, March 15, 2017].

Now that the Muslims the white leftist parties (expected to act like obedient pets) are abandoning the likes of Labour, the political system is collapsing. The bread-and-butter economic style issues which used to keep parties like Labour in power are falling away.

Unless the PVV’s followers simply abandon it out of disappointment, Wilders is still at the center of Dutch politics and is well placed to capitalize if there is a crisis. Meanwhile, the center-left has all but disintegrated. All that is keeping the project limping along are the center-right conservatives who had to act tough in order to win the election, making promises they had no intention of keeping.http://www.vdare.com/posts/the-long-view-on-the-dutch-elections